


How They Do In America

by peterlorres21stCentury



Category: Original Work, Peter Lorre - Fandom
Genre: Belly Kink, Belly Rubs, F/M, Original Character(s), Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21856795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterlorres21stCentury/pseuds/peterlorres21stCentury
Summary: Washington D.C., 1940. On the cusp of world war, two lonely museum scientists find each other, bonding over a shared love for science, film, and a certain unusual kink.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1. Monday

**Author's Note:**

> Leo and Tanya are two romantic characters of mine that have followed me for about twenty years, growing and maturing as I do. Recently, for whatever reason, I was seized with the desire to write something for them again, coinciding with my renewed love for my favorite classic actor, Peter Lorre. Leo is absolutely, in every way, Peter playing one of his many roles in film, and I like to think that he might have enjoyed this character as a break from being the creepy villain all the time. Please sit back, imagine some forgotten '40s film noir starring the man himself, and enjoy this work-in-progress that combines several lifelong obsessions. :)

Every day was the same.

The alarm clock was set for 6 am, startling Leo out of his murky dreams and into another harsh summer day. He lay in bed for as long as he dared, shallowly breathing the city’s stale air that leaked through the open window. Slowly, he gathered his energy and peeled himself off the sheets, stumbling into the bathroom to wash and shave.

He wet his hair and combed it back, glaring critically at his last clean shirt and rumpled suit hanging in front of the bathroom window to air out. He had given up long ago on keeping it sharply pressed in this oppressive humidity. He pulled his clothes down from the hanger and, after some thought, decided not to wear the tie or jacket, at least not until he arrived at the museum-- though he often suspected that he could show up wearing only his dirty field boots and none of his colleagues would notice.

He dressed, slipped on his glasses, and took his pocket watch from the top of the dresser. It lay warm in his palm as he opened it to check the time: 6:30. He yawned and fixed the chain to his vest, trying to avoid looking in the vanity mirror at his own weary, hollow expression, his protruding eyes shadowed underneath with too little sleep.

When he padded into the kitchenette, poking around halfheartedly in the pantry for his breakfast, he soon remembered that he still had to buy supplies for the week. It was just as well. He never had a decent appetite this early in the morning. That would happen later, every day at 10 o’clock without fail, and it didn’t seem to matter if he ate breakfast or not. Today he chose not to. He re-heated the bitter dregs of coffee left over from yesterday and gulped it down with a shudder, chasing it with a single cigarette.

Still tired.

He listlessly read the morning paper until 7 o’clock, put on his hat and shoes, and left his room to lock up. He made his way as quietly as possible down the creaking stairs, hoping that the landlord wouldn’t be hanging around in the lobby so early. His heart sank when he saw the landlord was there already, sulking in his usual broad-shouldered slump behind the front desk.

“Oh. Good morning, Max,” Leo said, touching the brim of his hat.

Max’s sullen eyes followed him, glaring under bristling eyebrows.

“Your rent’s due,” he said gruffly.

“Oh, but… it’s not the end of the month, is it?” Leo asked. Anxiety fluttered in his chest at the possibility of forgetting several weeks’ time.

“No. But you usually pay up the first week of every month. I was concerned when I didn’t get it.” Max put a particular sarcastic emphasis on his concern, showing his square teeth in a grimace.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get it as soon as I get my paycheck,” assured Leo. He tried to offer a smile. “It’s a little late.”

Max glowered and slouched deeper into his leather chair. “Late. You work for feds, don’tcha? The feds can’t mail the checks on time?”

“I don’t know. They’re usually very good about it.”

Max gave a snort and returned to studying the daily racing forms. “Well, find out what the holdup is. Don’t miss your payment.”

Leo nodded, threw his jacket over one shoulder and made his escape, slipping out of the crumbling rowhouse apartment and into the bright, torrid streets.

The walk to the bus stop was uneventful, as was the bus ride itself, bearing him away on rickety suspension towards 16th Street into the heart of the nation’s capital. He watched the stone rowhouses and apartments speed past in a blur, then watched them give way to the white monument churches and columned embassies fenced with Victorian wrought iron.

With great effort he tried not to be reminded of the architecture that lay behind him, some four thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean. The city of Washington was beautiful in its own austere way, but to him it was a pale shadow of Vienna and Berlin, two destroyed jewels of Europe that still haunted his dreams. He lowered the brim of his hat over his eyes as they filled with unbidden tears.

 _Stop it. Stop,_ he thought. He bit his lips, willing himself through pain to stop crying, but the heartsickness didn’t leave. He turned his face to the window and wiped away the tears trickling down his cheeks, glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed. No one had. The other passengers sat in stony silence, reading the newspapers or mindlessly staring into space. Leo found himself pondering their thoughts, wondering what they were heartsick for, or if they had ever lost something in the war that could never be returned. He reached into his pocket and clutched his watch tightly just to feel the mechanism tick, a tiny comforting heartbeat every second, until the bus made its last stop at 10th and Constitution.

Feeling a little calmer, he crossed the street to face the marble edifice of his second home, the Museum of Natural History, and paused to soak in the heat for a moment longer before descending into the cavernous interior. The guard nodded at him in silent familiarity as Leo made his way through the employee elevators and up two levels in the west wing, to Invertebrate Paleontology.

The familiar smells of old paper, plaster and label glue welcomed him as he entered, and as always his anxiety relaxed. He even perked up a little when he saw Dr. Carvell, the tall, dryly humorous curator of fossil corals, approaching from the opposite direction.

“Good morning, Lawrence,” said Leo, waving to him.

“Ah, good morning, Leo,” said Dr. Carvell with a pleased smile. “I haven’t seen you in a while. You’re still at the same desk in the type collections?”

“Yes. They told me the new offices still aren’t ready.”

“It is a shame,” Dr. Carvell agreed. “I rather hoped they would move a little faster to get it ready for you.”

Leo smiled with slight embarrassment. “Oh, it isn’t so bad. It’s very peaceful there.”

“Still. I’ll ask again what can be done about it.”

“Thank you. Oh, by the way, I... I wanted to offer my...” Leo paused to think of the proper word. “My regrets. I heard about the decision for the new chairman. I’m very sorry.”

“Ah well.” Dr. Carvell looked wistful as he folded his bony fingers together. “It would have been nice to take that seat. But I’m confident in Dr. Peterson’s abilities. He should serve this department well.”

Leo raised a skeptical eyebrow, but gave no voice to his doubt. Dr. Felix Peterson, formerly of Botany, had somehow been handed the post of Paleontology department chair in a federal appointment that pleased absolutely no one. Staff resented him, patrons and donors took offense to his surly attitude. Even Peterson evidently hated being in charge of a department he had so little experience in. How he was ever selected for the post was something of a bureaucratic mystery, and Peterson wasn’t talking.

“Well. As far as I’m concerned,” said Leo, moving closer to speak in an undertone, “you are the chairman. But don’t tell Peterson I said that.”

A thin, yet genuine smile spread over Dr. Carvell’s cadaverous face. “Not a word. Thank you, Leo,” he said. “That means a lot. I’ll let you get back to your work now.”

They parted ways and Leo rounded the corner to continue on, but he stopped short upon noticing something peculiar about the row of guest offices. The walls were freshly decorated with color reprints of plants from around the world, and a new sign reading POLLEN LAB was displayed prominently on the center door.

Leo frowned. It wasn’t enough that Botany already took up two whole floors, not including the massive Herbarium library of pressed plant specimens, but now it had to invade the guest Paleontology offices-- offices he could sorely use. He was certain this was all Dr. Peterson’s doing.

Incidentally, and rather unfortunately, the chairman’s office was directly in the path to his desk. Leo rose higher on his toes and walked as lightly as he could, doing his best not to make a sound. It was almost impossible not to attract some attention in the sepulchral quiet of the collections, but Dr. Peterson was very fat and tended not to investigate too closely if he was already sitting down.

To his relief, he made it safely past the chairman’s office and into his own private corner in the type collections, near the library. It wasn’t a bad place to work-- not good, either, but it was quiet and somewhat hidden behind the waiting racks of plaster-covered _incertae sedis_ fossils from years past. Apart from lacking any windows and sitting directly underneath a return air vent, it was decent enough. Things weren’t much better for him as a student at Göttingen, he always told himself, and he could endure it again.

He threw his jacket on, already feeling the keen draft from the ceiling vent. He brushed the plaster dust from his desk and was barely settled in his seat when:

“BeckERT!” Dr. Peterson’s throaty voice bellowed down the hall moments before his bulk filled the narrow library passage.

Leo cringed. “It’s Becker, sir. Not Beckert,” he corrected meekly, wondering just how many times he had repeated it in the past six months.

“Beckert, tell me something,” Dr. Peterson droned on. “It’s been a month already and I still haven’t seen any materials from you. Not so much as an abstract. What have you been doing all this time?”

“Erm…” Leo’s mouth went dry. He had been dreading the approaching museum conference since early June. Now it was mid-July and the deadline was exactly two weeks away. He opened his mouth to make some excuse, but the chairman interrupted him.

“Never mind,” Dr. Peterson snapped. “In all honesty I don’t care one way or the other, but upper management cares a great deal about these events. You know what has to be done. Get to work and give me a copy of your presentation notes by next week.”

“Next week? That’s not enough time,” Leo protested weakly.

“You should have thought of that a month ago. Make this a priority, and don’t let me catch you wasting time again.” Dr. Peterson scowled and disappeared back to his office.

“Yes, sir,” Leo sighed in defeat.

A moment later he kicked himself for not inquiring about the status of his pay, but didn’t want to risk the chairman’s wrath a second time in one day. He pulled down his stack of handwritten notes, uncovered the weathered German-English dictionary from his myriad _Crinoidea_ reprints, and set to work with his translation.

He made dutiful progress for several hours until, like clockwork, he was struck with the morning hunger attack.

“Ten o’clock already?” he muttered, flipping open his watch to verify the time. Two minutes after ten. He had to laugh at his own body’s accuracy.

“You’ve known worse,” he whispered to himself, rubbing a hand across his grumbling stomach. He frowned and tried to ignore it, but the pangs in his belly turned to acid heartburn and made it almost impossible to think.

“All right, fine.” He finally gave in to its demands, pulling a hidden box of saltine crackers from the left-hand drawer. He ate them furtively one at a time to minimize the crunching sound. Food was strictly not allowed in the collections and he knew it, but where else was he supposed to keep anything? 

“There. Now be quiet,” he said, grateful that nobody was around to hear his monologuing, and returned to work. The hunger faded enough to allow him to continue, but it was still a struggle to concentrate on some of the more difficult grammar and spelling.

He checked his watch again when he heard the voices of other staff members ambling into the hallways. Lunchtime now. He gratefully stretched his arms above his head, felt a few joints crack, and leisurely started towards the opposite side of Paleontology, cutting through the dimly-lit maze of cabinets that dominated the center of the floor. To his left he heard the rap of footsteps and echoing conversation of two young women, most likely part of the general collection staff, so he paused at the intersection of two cabinet rows to let them pass.

“After you,” he said to them absently, thinking they were aware of his presence.

He was wrong. The women screamed in unison, sending his heart racing in equal shock.

“I’m sorry!” he cried, stepping back. “I thought--”

“Oh, it’s you, Dr. Becker,” one woman gasped. “We didn’t see you.”

“Or hear you!” the other said indignantly. “Shouldn’t sneak up on a person like that.”

“I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, holding out his hands in apology. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Please...”

He felt his face heat up with shame and was grateful for the dim light. He motioned for them to go ahead, and they did so, a little faster than before. They giggled nervously upon reaching the end of the row and Leo was almost sure he caught the muttered words “weird little creep,” followed by a mocking imitation of his accent.

Leo waited until their laughter faded away before continuing to the cafeteria alone. The meal had no flavor at all and sat heavy in him like a rock. Dejected, he wandered through the public area, across the grand Rotunda and out into the summer heat. He passed the rest of the hour on the front museum steps, watching the tourists through heavy-lidded eyes and smoking one cigarette after another, until it was time to return.

The rest of the day passed in a silent, isolated blur. No one spoke to him, not even the chairman, and he accomplished almost nothing more. The silence still rang in his ears when he left the museum for the evening, turning his steps home again.

“Hi there, friend. Can I ask you something?”

Leo startled at the stranger’s voice. He looked up to see a man in a nondescript gray suit, leaning forward to hold out his open hand in greeting.

“Yes,” Leo answered tremulously, unsure what he wanted. Sometimes tourists stopped him for directions, but this grinning stranger seemed a little bit too confident to be a tourist. “What do you need?”

“Oh, I don’t need anything, friend. But since you’re here...” The man produced a thick stack of typed pamphlets, seemingly from nowhere. “Since you’re here, I wonder if you would be interested in buying a genuine illustrated, illuminated, fully interpreted set of books from the scripture of the Bhagavad Gita...”

Leo groaned internally. He should have known better than to be suckered into this conversation. He stayed for as long as he dared, occasionally making polite noises as he desperately searched for an escape route.

“Now my friend,” the salesman continued, resting a heavy hand on Leo’s shoulder. “What would you say if I told you that this full set of fine books, this entire set, would only cost you pennies on the dollar for the next three short years?”

“I believe it,” Leo said, unable to take the strain anymore. “Now if you please--”

He squirmed away in a hurry from the salesman’s prying fingers and slipped behind a large family passing on the sidewalk, disappearing from view. Ignoring the salesman’s protests, he dissolved into the crowd until he was safely off the Mall and into the shopping district of Penn Quarter.

The odors of food and alcohol swirled from every open diner, bar and restaurant in the neighborhood as he passed by. Leo didn’t have much of an appetite, but decided there was little else for him to do right now. It was the same number of steps to his usual diner, the same amount of time spent eating without much pleasure, the same number of steps to the bus stop, the same dull ride back to his apartment.

When he finally shut the door and locked it behind him, he breathed his first sigh of relief. The day was finally over. He undid his vest and shirt, flopped into bed in front of the open window, and lay like a dead thing in the unbreaking heat. A languorous, gloomy song played on the radio from some other apartment, and he listened to it over the distant noises of traffic, the muffled voices from other rooms, all the slow rhythms of the evening.

His stomach gurgled with his dinner and he closed his eyes, patting it softly in answer. His hand always seemed to rest there naturally whenever he lay down, and without thinking he worked his thumb under his waistband, loosening it away from the soft curve of his stomach.

He smiled at the familiar warm flush that accompanied his motions. He could not remember a time when it wasn’t pleasurable to contemplate a full belly, though he never quite knew why it gave him erotic satisfaction, too. His favorite sensation was how he felt right now: completely round, full and sated, just on the edge of discomfort until a good belly rub smoothed away the sharp little edges of pain. He was so relaxed that he nearly fell asleep, but he continued to massage away the bloated feeling under his ribs until a rhythmic, delicious rumble of easy digestion moved through him.

He sighed blissfully. It was the best feeling in the whole world.

His hand moved lower. He continued stroking, intending to forget about everything that happened to him today, until a recurring thought intruded on his consciousness. Was he the only one who did this? Could there be someone else, in some other lonely place, who longed to feel a different hand trail over their belly in the same way?

The world seemed colder, emptier at the possibility that there was no one. He stilled his hand. Distracted, he let his arousal fade and ebb away before he drifted into sleep.

It was always the same.


	2. Friday

The week of thunderstorms was almost at a close. Leo stood at the library window, entranced by the rushing clouds in the upper atmosphere. He had never seen anything quite like it. For four days straight, always just before 5 pm, the heat in the city built like an oven until the skies darkened and poured down rain and lightning. A peculiar hot, metallic smell always seeped from the concrete whenever it rained, then washed away on fresher air after an hour or so, leaving the city bathed in pleasant evening coolness. 

Today the storms began unexpectedly early, sending surprised tourists on the street running. He watched some of them scurry for cover in the museum just as a particularly loud clap of thunder split the air. He blinked and moved away from the window.

On reflection, his day had been rather more productive than most. He had reluctantly kept away from his fossils for the whole working week, completely devoting himself to finishing the plans for his conference presentation. He had even managed to ignore hunger pangs past the 10 o’clock mark today, although now it was after 11 and he was getting desperate. He returned to his desk, reached over to the far drawer and fished out a chocolate bar, well-hidden behind some papers. He unwrapped it slowly, savoring the sugary fragrance, and was about to bite off a corner when--

“BECKERT!”

Leo groaned and slammed the candy back in the drawer. He held his aching head as Peterson loomed up behind him.

“Take this down to Microscopy,” the chairman barked, gripping something in his meaty fist. He tossed it on the desk. “Be quick about it.”

Leo stared at the object. It was a tiny glass vial containing some greenish sample suspended in a clear liquid. The side label read “95% EtOH” in cramped handwriting, and some binomial designation that he couldn’t make out.

“What is it?” Leo asked wearily.

“If you must know, it’s part of my student’s morphology project,” said Dr. Peterson. “I want serial sections of that sample. Understand? Get this down to Microscopy and tell the technician to put it ahead of the queue.”

Leo tried not to sigh. “Why can’t your student take it himself?”

“ _She_ is taking notes for me at the candidate interviews,” replied Dr. Peterson with a slight sneer. “And so are the rest of the interns. I’d take this to the lab myself, of course, but that’s why you’re here.”

Leo’s eyes rolled to the side. “Naturally,” he muttered. Other biting remarks were on his mind, but they were all in German and didn’t translate quite as well.

“What was that?” snapped Dr. Peterson.

“Nothing, sir.”

“That’s what I thought. Get to it, Beckert.” The chairman clapped his shoulder a little too hard and turned on his heel, stepping heavily back into the corridor.

Leo’s open palm reflexively curled into a fist. He thought better of pounding the table and instead threw his pen to the floor in a fury. He considered flinging the vial too, but decided against it.

“Is it time to leap out of the window yet?” he muttered through gritted teeth. Swearing under his breath, he took the vial and stormed into the stairwell.

He was not too familiar with every department in the building, but he happened to know Microscopy was somewhere on the basement level. The air cooled as he descended, and the deeper he went, the louder the hissing of steam pipes and ductwork. He spent some time taking wrong turns through the maze of narrow hallways and cryptic, unmarked offices, growing more nervous all the while. He had never gone this far into the museum’s bowels on his own before, and the endless pale yellow walls and bright white floor tiles began to take on a claustrophobic, sinister aspect. It didn’t help that in all his wandering, he had yet to encounter a single person.

Finally, he caught sight of a door stenciled in large block letters: MICROSCOPY/HISTOLOGY. Holding the vial tight, he pushed the door open.

“Hello?” he said softly, poking his head through the door. No one answered, but he fancied he heard the sound of quiet music drifting to him. He entered the laboratory and looked around.

It was quite dark inside. Most of the lab’s sub-rooms were closed and unlit. As he drew closer to a single lighted room towards the back wall, the music grew clearer, as if a radio or record player was turned on. He recognized it as a wistful, slow Dvořák piece, sweet as a lullaby and full of longing for a life left behind. It tugged at his heart for a brief moment until he heard something else over the orchestra: a female voice, humming along to the sad tune.

That couldn’t be part of a recording. He looked around in the dark. 

“Excuse me,” he called again, feeling more uneasy than ever. “Is anyone there? I need to speak with--”

He heard a click. The lights flashed on and Leo nearly jumped out of his skin, eyes bulging at the tall woman who suddenly appeared behind him. In his frightened state she was a veritable Amazon, long-legged and broad-shouldered; a powerful swimmer’s body under a plain gray skirt and white blouse. Half her face was taken up by a pair of safety goggles, imparting an unnerving, eyeless stare. In one blue-gloved hand glinted the lethal point of a scalpel blade.

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking at him severely.

Leo closed his mouth, almost unaware it had been hanging open. He felt rather smaller than usual, even by everyday standards, but he moved closer and held out the vial in a sweating hand.

“This is for Dr. Peterson. He wanted sex-- _sections,_ ” he said more firmly, stumbling over the word in horror.

The woman didn’t seem to notice. She took the specimen in the palm of her glove, turning it over. “Dr. Peterson in Botany?” she asked.

“N-no, that is, he works in Paleontology now...”

“Paleo? I don’t process anything from Paleo.”

Leo’s brain flailed. The correct explanation was in mind, but his mouth refused to form the words. “For a student,” he stammered, backing away towards the door. “He wants this done... right away...”

He gave up. He reached to touch the brim of a hat that wasn’t there, swiftly turned around and exited the room. He scarcely knew how he found the stairs back to Paleontology again, but before he realized it he was back at his own desk, engulfed with such profound embarrassment that he considered leaving work early, maybe for good.

 _You can never go there again, Becker. You stupid idiot,_ he thought. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Of course he would have no reason to go back to that laboratory, but just the idea that the woman was already laughing at him would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He retrieved his chocolate bar from the drawer, took a very large bite, and finished up the last difficult paragraph of his presentation in a furious fifteen minutes. Licking his lips, he gathered up the papers and purposefully made his way into the chairman’s office.

“Did you deliver that specimen?” Dr. Peterson growled, not moving from his plush chair.

“Yes, sir, it’s done.”

“When will it be ready?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t give me a time.”

Dr. Peterson muttered something, annoyed, but didn’t press the issue. “Are those your notes for the conference?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see them.”

Leo handed the papers over. He waited, shifting his feet impatiently, as the chairman flipped through the stack with a disdainful glare. Finally he glanced up.

“Beckert, in my long career I have deciphered the written notes of illiterate students, technicians, engineers, and medical doctors. Out of all of them, your handwriting is the worst I’ve ever seen.” Dr. Peterson tossed the papers on the desk. “Type it and get it back to me on Monday.”

Leo seethed. He snatched the papers back and was tempted to leave without saying a word, but he was just irritated and emboldened enough for one more question.

“Very well, sir. But it would be nice to know where my check is, before I complete any more work.”

“Your check?” Peterson’s voice rose in volume. “What are you talking about?”

“My paycheck,” Leo leveled back at him. “It’s late and, unlike certain people, I have to pay rent.”

“And what makes you think I know anything about it? Take it up with Accounting ”

“You have to approve the check before it goes to Accounting, is that right? Have you done that?”

“Of course I have!” Dr. Peterson roared, his jowls shaking as he pounded both hands flat on the table. “Do you take me for a fool? Now stop asking questions and get out of my sight! Take it up with Accounting if your precious check is late, don’t bother me about it again!”

Leo backed down immediately. He clutched the papers to his thumping heart and hurried out, making a beeline for the library. He settled behind one of the typewriters, inserted a fresh sheet of paper and typed feverishly, not noticing or caring about the spelling mistakes.

After a short time he stopped typing and held his head in despair.

“I don’t even know where Accounting is,” he said to himself.

In a fit of pique he ripped the typed sheet to pieces. The hell with it. It was almost lunchtime anyway.


	3. Quake

“End of the month is coming up, Leo.” Max lounged in the front doorway, a cigar dangling from his lip. “Still haven’t got your rent.”

“Yes, Max, I know it,” Leo replied, not looking at him. He waited for the bulky landlord to move aside and allow him to leave, but he did not.

“What did the feds say? Did they forget to pay you? Or maybe you drank your money away this weekend and can’t pay me. Sure, that must be it.” He smirked, sending cigar ash over the dingy carpet.

Leo bristled. He was in no mood for these accusations, not on another Monday following a long, lonely weekend spent in books and soulless political radio and cheap matinée films, hungrily consuming one after the other until he felt sick.

“Why do I even pay rent?” he burst out. “This place is filthy and you spend all the money on racehorses. It’s a...” He paused, remembering the slang he picked up from the movies. “A flophouse. That’s what this is.”

“Hey, I run a respectable flophouse,” said Max, pretending to be offended. “It ain’t easy keeping my rent so low. Besides, it’s up to code. It passed inspection last year.”

“After you bribed the inspector,” Leo muttered. “Look, I’m not here to argue with you. Just let me go to work. I’m going to talk to Accounting today, all right?”

“Sure, sure.” He still didn’t move.

Leo crossed his arms. Even at his full height he didn’t quite reach the landlord’s shoulder. “Max. Why do you care so much when my rent isn’t even late?”

Max glared at him for a moment longer, then shrugged his heavy arms and shifted out of the way. “It’s funny when you get sore. Your accent gets worse.”

Leo snarled and pushed past him, ignoring the throaty laughter that followed him out the door and down the sidewalk. He stayed angry all the way downtown, even to the very doors of the museum, until the comforting smell of familiar things surrounded him at his own desk once again.

He took a moment to breathe. He would type a final copy of his presentation, then go to Accounting, then use the rest of the day to prepare the Devonian crinoid fossils for a paper he wanted to submit for publication. He nodded to himself and set to work.

Some hours later it was already shaping up to be a decent Monday.

That was, at least, until he felt the vibrations through the floor.

He looked up in alarm. It sounded like a truck driving straight through the building on a lower floor. He sat still and waited for an explanation, but the vibrations only increased. His chair shook under him, empty jars rattled in their boxes and the untreated fossil specimens began to tip off the shelves. From somewhere across the floor, Dr Peterson’s voice thundered:

“Do not use the elevators! I said DO NOT, you idiots, this is not a drill!”

The noise of breaking glass and the blare of a fire alarm echoed around him. Terrified, Leo leaped up and ran into the corridor.

“What is happening?” he pleaded to the group of interns sprinting past.

“Air raid!” one of them yelled, without slacking pace. “Get to the basement!”

Leo looked around wildly, deciding in a split second to follow after the interns. He was halfway to the basement level when he heard Dr. Carvell shout from the landing above:

“No, no, it’s an earthquake! We have to get out of the building!”

“What?” Leo’s head reeled. He reversed direction and tried to follow him back to ground level, but his short legs couldn’t keep up with Dr. Carvell’s long strides taking the stairs two at a time. He was soon left behind, alone and disoriented, in the dim stairwell. When he tried to open the nearest door to an unfamiliar access hall, hoping to find a quicker way out, it was inexplicably locked.

“ _Scheisse,_ ” Leo hissed. He stood there paralyzed with his back to the yellow concrete wall, winded from so much pointless sprinting up and down stairs. The vibrations and shaking had ceased, but the fire alarms continued to blare and his heart never stopped hammering in his chest. What if all the doors were locked? Was he trapped?

Footsteps on the level below. He tried to call out; only a frightened whine escaped him. He stumbled downstairs as fast as he could and came face-to-face with a tall young woman, her hands clapped over her ears in distress. She looked equally frightened and on the point of apologizing for being in his way, but instead she reached out to lightly touch his arm.

“This way!” she said, guiding him to a different door.

He didn’t question her. He followed her through twisting access halls, past the elevators, and through the emergency side exit. Bright, blessed sunlight filled his vision as they stepped into the small flower garden fringing the parking lot.

“Oh, _Gott,_ ” Leo groaned under his breath. He rubbed his face and took a few grateful seconds to soak in the oppressive summer heat and the chattering of cicadas. The streets were eerily quiet. If not for the wail of police sirens speeding towards them from a distance, even the artery of Constitution Avenue was still.

“Do you know what happened?” the woman pleaded. “I thought it was an explosion!”

“Huh? Oh no, no explosion,” Leo stammered. “It’s an earthquake, Dr. Carvell said.” He knew this woman probably wouldn’t know or care who Dr. Carvell was, but she didn’t comment on it.

“So Eve was right,” she said, almost to herself. “She’s from California, she’d know. I wonder where she went. She didn’t come out the same exit.”

Leo shook his head blankly. His hands trembled as he reached into his breast pocket for his cigarettes. In his fumbling, his lighter managed to escape and fall at the woman’s feet.

“Oh, no. Please don’t--” he said, but she had already bent down to pick it up. She held it for a second, silently considering, and flicked it open.

Leo glanced at the flame, then he looked past it, at her. She waited, bright sea-glass eyes fixed on him from behind the emotionless reflection of her glasses, but for a long moment he couldn’t move. That stare was familiar and it frightened him. She couldn’t be...

He twitched as the loud horn of a passing ambulance shocked him back into reality, and he leaned forward to breathe life into his cigarette.

“Thank you, Miss,” he said. He offered a fresh cigarette to her but she politely refused and returned his lighter.

“And thank you for showing me the way out,” he continued, shaky with adrenaline. “I still get lost in this place.”

“Oh, don’t mention it,” she said. She glanced over the flower garden, up a short stairway to where a knot of people migrated over the Mall green, aimless and confused. “Maybe we should go up there. I need to find the rest of my lab group.”

“So do I,” said Leo, still trying to make up his mind if this was the Microscopy woman or not. “I’ll walk you up there.”

“Thanks. Mister...” She paused to let him supply his name.

“Hm? Oh, Becker. Leo Becker.”

“Are you a curator?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Becker, then,” she smiled.

He shrugged. His title seemed to mean nothing here, anyway. “Just Leo,” he replied. He exhaled a deep breath of smoke and let his nerves relax into it. “What is your name?”

“Tanya Rosenthal,” the woman said crisply, holding out her hand.

Leo, from habit, started to take her hand gently by the fingertips, her fingers soft and slender in his palm, before he remembered that wasn’t how anyone greeted anybody in America. He switched to a firmer grip and shook her hand.

“Tanya. That’s a pretty name,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Rosenthal. Or is it Dr. Rosenthal?”

She lowered her eyes, watching her own feet as they ascended the stairs. “No,” she said, a note of melancholy in her voice. “Just Tanya.”

Leo didn’t say anything more about it. He looked around, still searching for his missing colleagues on the green.

“Which department are you in?” asked Tanya.

“Paleontology,” he answered, distracted. “Invertebrate division.”

“Oh, so that’s why you said the sample was from Paleo,” she said. “That makes more sense.”

Leo’s eyes widened. “How do you know about that?”

“I’m in Microscopy downstairs. Remember? You came to deliver a specimen from Dr. Peterson last week.”

“Ah,” he said glumly, wishing for the earth to swallow him up. “Yes, I remember.”

She grinned. “I still have that specimen. Last time you ran away so quickly, I couldn’t get any details.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his face turning crimson. “That was rude of me.”

“It’s all right. I was going to ask Dr. Peterson later, but now you’re here. What did you need from it, exactly? Serial cross sections, sagittal plane, or something else?”

“Hm, that first one, I think he said.” Leo blew smoke through his nose contemptuously as he thought on it. “Doesn’t matter. Destroy it, for all I care.”

“I can’t do that,” Tanya replied.

“No, of course not, it’s just-- it’s not even mine.” He looked around to make sure the chairman wasn’t nearby to overhear his next words. “Peterson is too lazy to walk downstairs and give it to you himself, that’s all.”

“Oh. Well, maybe there’s a good reason for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe this wasn’t an earthquake,” she said with a crooked smile. “It was Dr. Peterson trying to walk downstairs.”

Leo met eyes with her in astonishment. She covered her mouth and struggled to stop herself, but her irreverent laugh was so infectious that he found himself giggling too.

“That’s right,” he said through laughter. “He’s decided to take up exercise!”

Something about the mental image was so ridiculous that they both had a difficult time standing up straight.

“Oh. I shouldn’t make fun,” she said when she regained her breath. “But all the technicians joke about him. He’s pretty infamous.”

“No, please. I needed a laugh today,” Leo assured her. “Everything for the past week has been wrong.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Tanya looked worriedly towards the museum, squinting at a broken window on an upper floor. “I hope we can go back inside soon. Come on, let’s keep looking.”

He agreed. As they searched for familiar faces and listened for the all-clear, he closed one eye against the sun and peered more closely at Tanya for the first time. She was quite tall beside him, with speed and strong control in her stride, but she was no fearsome Amazon. There was a kindly softness in her face and in (he noticed with a blush) her wide hips. In fact every part of her frame filled out generously in the dimensions of a Titian painting come to life. Even the color of her hair reminded him of artwork: thick, shoulder-length auburn hair that fell in waves and burned like copper in the bright sun.

They wandered across the Mall to the the red Smithsonian castle, and loitered in the shade of the trees flanking the front steps. She turned her head, perhaps feeling his eyes on her, and he quickly glanced away and pretended to check the time instead.

“That’s a lovely watch,” Tanya said as he pulled it from his pocket.

“Oh, thank you.”

“I don’t see many like that anymore. Is it very old?”

“No, not very old. My professor gave this to me back in...” He trailed off, realizing just how much time had passed. “That was ten years ago.”

He turned the watch over to the reverse and ran his thumb over the circular inscription on its smooth gold surface. “Look. Everyone in the Geology department at Göttingen paid a little money to have it inscribed for me, after I defended my thesis.”

“That was so nice of them,” said Tanya. “May I see?”

Leo held it out to her. She held the watch gently between thumb and forefinger, tilting it to read the inscription.

“Leopold Johannes Becker,” she read aloud. “And, um... my Latin is not so good.”

“I forgot most of it,” he admitted. “But it says: _Extra Gottingam non est vita. Si est vita, non est ita._ It means ‘outside Göttingen, there is no life. If there is life, it is nothing like here.' It’s just a little joke among the professors. And that picture in the middle is the university crest.”

Tanya smiled. “I like that, it’s very beautiful. They must have cared a great deal to do this for you.”

“Yes, they did.” A distant look came into his eyes. “That feels so long ago. Before it all changed.”

“What do you mean?”

He gazed at her sadly. “Do you know what they called it when the Nazis went after the universities? It was the ‘great purge.’”

“Oh.” Tanya’s expression was grave.

“I got out of Germany while I could. But so many of my friends... I could not tell you where they are.”

He flipped the watch around, staring at the play of reflected sunlight across the polished lid. “I used to think of selling this, when I lived in London with no money. I knew that Göttingen wasn’t the same anymore. They wouldn’t care if I sold it.”

“But you kept it.”

“Yes, I kept it. It was the only precious thing I had. Maybe it is old-fashioned to keep it, but I am... sentimental about it.”

He checked the time briefly, then closed the lid and cradled the watch protectively in both hands. When he looked at Tanya again, she was gazing solemnly at the ground, and he instantly felt regret. He hadn’t meant to unload his emotions onto her so readily, but it was the first time he was able to talk about his past without fear, and the only time someone else seemed to understand the pain of his loss.

His stomach rumbled and felt very hollow for the first time since the moments of terror in the quake. He took one more drag on his neglected cigarette before discarding it, crushing it underfoot in the grass.

“Tanya,” he ventured. “It’s almost noon. Have you had lunch yet?”

“No.”

“Would you like to eat with me? I promise I won’t tell any more sad stories. We can talk about anything you like.”

“What about your lab group?” she asked. “Don’t you need to check in with them?”

He looked around one more time, still seeing no one in the crowd he recognized. “I doubt they would miss me,” he said. “What about you?”

She thought for a moment. “Same here,” she admitted.

“Well. Would you care to join me?”

She faced him with a grateful smile. “I’d like that very much. Where are we going?”

“Name your place. Whatever you want.” Leo knew that sounded pretty extravagant for someone with a late paycheck, but Tanya didn’t know about that.

Her face lit up. “Have you ever been to Paula’s?”

He shook his head. “Where is that?”

“Just up 11th Street. It’s a coffeehouse, and you can get a good soup and sandwich. And for dessert the owner makes the best little French cream pastries. It’s not too expensive, either.”

“Hm, yes.” His mouth watered just thinking about it. He motioned to the path ahead. “Lead the way, Tanya. Let’s go and meet this Paula.”

She put her hand to her mouth, laughing. Together they walked, almost a straight shot north from the museum, until they reached the unassuming coffeehouse tucked around the corner from the International Hotel. Flags of many nations sailed from the level above them, and a single painted word, “Paula’s,” welcomed them through the glass door.

Coffee scents, rich and sweet, pervaded his senses, and Leo was briefly transported back to the old _Dreigroschencafé_ , surrounded by dear friends and colleagues on holiday in Vienna. The music and colors of the cabaret stage flashed in his memory for one precious instant before evaporating like steam, and the present moment stole him back. He sat at the counter beside Tanya and ordered black coffee to drink while they ate roast beef sandwiches and cream of potato soup, and for a while they were shy and silent together, listening to the hum of conversation all around them.

The place buzzed with rumors of only one thing: the earthquake. At one table, a pool of IRS typists gleefully informed everyone that most government offices were dismissed to assess structural damage. Another table of patrons from Commerce were certain it was all the result of sinister foreign influence, while still others speculated it was brought on by too much construction under the city. Through listening, Leo and Tanya learned it was of greater scope than anyone realized. Sporadic news reports came through on the tinny radio that the epicenter was to their south, somewhere in Virginia, and the shocks were felt as far as Canada.

“Imagine that,” said Tanya.

“This doesn’t happen often?” said Leo.

Tanya shook her head. “Not around here. I lived here for most of my life and I never felt an earthquake.”

“I was in an earthquake once,” he said. “But it was small. It was years ago, in Mongolia.”

“Oh! That sounds exciting. What did you do there?”

“I collected fossils with my professor. Most of Geology was there, too... here, I keep the photo with me.”

He withdrew his wallet and found the worn photograph of his class, lined up in two rows against a background of dusty gray rock walls. “Here it is. I’m at the end of the row there, with the hammer.”

Tanya examined the photo with a smile. “You look so young,” she said. “Is that a mustache?”

“ _Ja,_ ” he laughed. “I thought it made me look older.” He peered at the photo again through his glasses and rested a hand on his stomach. “Except I was just younger and fatter.”

She laughed with him, blushing slightly. “Everyone looks so happy.”

“We were,” he said. “It was hard work but we loved it. Every evening we gathered in the camp to drink, and sing, and watch the stars at night.” He stared at the photo a few moments longer before putting it away.

“What did you do, before you worked here?” he asked.

“Nothing so exciting,” she said. “But I studied marine science in college, and I used to go on collecting trips too, to the East coast. Once, my professor took me to Delaware to count horseshoe crabs during spawn. You’ve seen them, right? _Limulus?_ ” she said in response to his questioning look.

“Oh! Of course, as fossils,” he smiled. “Not live ones.”

“I love them. They're cute,” she said. “I remember one night, I stood in the sand during the full moon tide. The whole beach was thick with horseshoe crabs, all tumbling and climbing over each other trying to mate. They surrounded me too, and I could feel their little claws digging, grabbing at my ankles. But they’re perfectly harmless, so I stood very still. Watching them, hearing them move around in the dark, just being there between the moon and sea, and knowing this has happened on ancient shores forever...” She trailed off.

“Five hundred million years,” remarked Leo. All human endeavor paled beside that number. They both stared into the abyss of deep time a moment longer.

“My professor showed me many things like that,” she said. “I miss him so much.”

Leo studied her face. Sadness glimmered in the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over, and his heart ached.

He tried to distract her with happier things for a while, about movies and favorite music and amusing stories. The lunch hour passed and people began to drift out into streets to return home, but they hardly noticed. They continued eating through plates of tiny delectable pastries until they felt stupefied and couldn’t hold any more. Leo began to speculate, given an infinite number of pastries, just how many she might put away, and the brief fantasy made him feel too warm and excited to think about it for long.

Eventually the afternoon grew late, and Tanya needed to return home. Leo left the money on the counter and walked out with her, where they stood uncertainly outside the door, each hesitating to be the first to say goodbye.

“I’d like to stay,” she said. “But I have so much to do at home.”

“I understand,” said Leo. His thoughts swam together in confusion, so much that he barely thought to ask where she lived.

“Tanya, I... I enjoyed our little talk,” he said softly. “I would like to see you again. Are you at the museum every day?”

“Yes. I’m always here,” she replied. “I’d be glad to meet you again for lunch sometime.”

“Tomorrow?” he asked, and beamed when she nodded her head yes. He reached for her hand, this time holding to the tips of her graceful fingers. He did not go so far as to kiss her hand, but inclined his head politely in a slight bow.

“In that case, _auf Wiedersehen,_ Miss Rosenthal,” he said gently. He was gratified to see her smile and blush to the tips of her ears.

“ _Auf Wiedersehen,_ Dr. Becker,” she said, and shyly waved goodbye.

He watched her go, a vacant smile on his lips, and walked lightheaded all the way up the opposite street. It wasn’t until he reached the bus stop that he realized just how fast his heart was pounding, or how his face glowed hot enough to melt steel. He barely kept it together long enough to board the bus and collapse into his seat, both frightened and giddy, as if he had just inhaled a dozen cigarettes at once.

“I can’t believe I said that to her,” he mumbled aloud. The scene of his foolish little farewell played back in his mind as he removed his glasses, rested his head on the window, and laughed.

“Who d’you think you are, anyway, Leo? Someone from the movies?” He covered his eyes and dissolved into a fit of helpless, nervous giggling.


	4. Dreams

The sea enveloped him like bathwater. He watched curiously as he felt himself descending into the depths, eyes open, water-breathing. Familiar creatures of fossil strata all revealed themselves to him in living color. Ammonites and jawless fishes swept past him in the current, while a sea scorpion paddled above, upside-down in the mottled light. He descended as if weights were attached to his legs, yet he had no fear of drowning. The water cooled as he allowed himself to fall to the ocean floor without a struggle, and he swam above a reef of corals and giant sponges. There in the midst of the reef, was the thing he had been searching for: a bed of crinoids, sea lilies, their feathered arms outspread and undulating slowly at the ends of long stalks like sunflowers.

He smiled, entranced. He reached out to the largest crinoid with both hands, desiring to touch, but drew back as it underwent a change. Its arms transformed into long strands of hair, streaming upwards in the currents, and a human face emerged from the center, eyes closed and sleeping. Before he knew it, Tanya stood there floating upright in its place, eyes shut, hands folded over her chest, feet pointed like a ballet dancer’s, suspended inches above the sea floor. Her waving hair began to grow and reach for him, grazing over his skin like silk, seeking to entangle him, but he welcomed it and stretched out his arms, wanting, as the alarm clock jolted him awake--

Leo slapped the alarm until it was quiet. He rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling, tracing the lines of a new crack in the plaster. A wave of disappointment washed over him.

He forced himself out of bed and went half-asleep through his routine, trying to hold onto the intense calm he found beneath that dream sea. He was partway through breakfast, still smiling to himself each time he recalled Tanya’s image in the dream, when he heard the telephone ring. He choked on his coffee and somehow managed to knock his knee on the edge of the table as he stood up to answer.

“Ah, _verdammt_ — hello?” he said irritably.

“Leo, good morning! It’s Lawrence.” The slow, patient tones of Dr. Carvell’s voice floated over the line.

“Oh! Yes, Lawrence, good morning.” Leo frowned, trying to think of why he should be calling this early. “Is everything all right?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose. I’m calling to tell you the museum is closed.”

“Closed? Why?”

“Well, they’re still doing inspections for structural integrity. Seems the earthquake did more damage to the roof than anything else, but they need to make sure.”

“Oh. Was anything of ours damaged?” Leo thought of the rickety shelf of _incertae sedis_ fossils with some trepidation.

“I wish I knew. I wasn’t allowed in the building. In any case, don’t bother coming in today. Tomorrow things should be more or less back to normal, so they tell me.”

“All right. Thank you, Lawrence.”

“My pleasure. Oh, and if you can, call others in the department and let them know, will you? I tried to call as many as I could but I’m sure I missed some of the techs.”

“I’ll try,” said Leo. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

He hung up and looked around the apartment aimlessly. He had no idea how to begin finding the names and numbers of all the technicians in Paleontology, and gave up after deciding they could figure out the situation for themselves. But a lingering image from his dream made him pick up the handset again.

“Operator. Could you get me the local number for a Tanya Rosenthal? She works for Smithsonian Natural History,” he added, unsure if that information was helpful.

“One moment, please.”

He waited on pins and needles for an interminable stretch of time.

“That number is Georgia 3-202,” the operator intoned.

Leo found a pencil and scribbled it in the margins of the morning paper. “Connect me, please.”

“One moment.”

The sound of ringing on the line sent a terrified jolt into the pit of his stomach. He had made a mistake. He began to wish for a wrong number, and was about to hang up when someone answered.

“Hello?” 

The voice of a much older woman threw him for a loop. “Um… may I speak to Tanya?” he asked, heart in his throat.

“Who is this?”

“I... my name is Leo Becker. We work together—well, not together, but we work for the same place. I wanted to tell her the museum is closed today.”

“Well, you’re too late. She already left for work.”

“Oh. She did?” He paused, fancying he heard another muffled voice complain in the background, but went ahead anyway. “When she comes back, could you tell her—”

“Yes, I’ll tell her. Goodbye.”

“I’m right here!” the indignant background voice said. “Who’s calling?”

“Shh, it’s nobody, Miss Tanya. Never you mind,” the older woman chided.

“Tanya?” Leo breathed.

“Oh, gimme that phone… hello? Hello, who is it?”

“Tanya!” He felt his heart might burst.

“Is that you, Dr. Becker?”

“Yes. I hope this isn’t a bad time?”

“No! Just wasn’t expecting to hear from you, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know if this was the right number. Listen, don’t bother coming in for work. The museum is closed. Dr. Carvell told me they had to check the building for damage.”

“What? I hope it isn’t serious.”

“I know, he made me worried when he said it.” He hesitated. “Did you… have other plans for today?”

There was an odd scuffling noise on the line. “Leave me alone, you—” she said tightly.

“Huh?” His stomach lurched with the fear of having said something wrong.

“Oh! Not you, Dr. Becker!” Tanya exclaimed. “My landlady is bugging me to stop talking. Look, if there’s no work today, I have errands to run. But are you free this evening?”

“Yes,” he said, quietly letting out the breath he was holding.

“Would you, maybe... like to see a movie with me?”

His jaw went slack. “Of course, yes,” he replied, after the initial shock wore off. “What time?”

“Meet me around 6, at the cinema on E Street. You know where that is?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been there sometimes.”

There was a pause. “We could eat dinner too, if you wanted,” she suggested.

“Yes. I’d like that very much,” he said, starting to wonder if this was all still part of a dream. “I’ll see you there. Goodbye, Tanya.”

“Goodbye.”

He hung up and immediately lit a cigarette, still tingling with the aftermath of adrenaline in his legs, and wondered why her presence did this to him every time. But it was done, and it was no dream.

He calmed himself and surveyed the apartment. For the first time he was struck by how dirty and cluttered it all appeared. Shirts piled upon the unmade bed. Old newspapers balanced in a stack on top of the toilet tank. And the unwashed coffee cups in the sink were, he suspected, growing new and dangerous forms of life.

Something compelled him to start tidying the books on the dresser, then fold the clean clothes away in the drawer. One thing led to another and before long he was collecting laundry and cleaning every surface of the kitchenette. It got to the point where he would have vacuumed every hallway carpet, the main foyer and the stairs if he knew that Max wouldn’t yell at him for it. He worked up a sweat and a terrific appetite in the unrelenting heat, but he couldn’t stop until the chaos was tamed and absolutely nothing was out of place.

By late morning he was finished, still without any clear idea why he had done it at all.

“It had to be done,” he told himself, putting on fresh clothes after a cool shower. “It isn’t like she’s going to see this dump... but it had to be done, that’s all.”

He fixed his hair more meticulously than usual, brushing it down until it was glossy. When he put his glasses on again, his own reflection came into sharper focus in the bathroom mirror. He moved closer and rested his hands on the now-gleaming sink, glaring in distaste at his rumpled brown suit.

“Get some new clothes, why don’t you?” he accused.

But he knew he couldn’t, not until his check came in. Ashamed, he looked in his wallet to see how much money remained and found one worn $10 bill. He rubbed it between his fingers, thinking. It would be enough for the week, maybe, but after rent and his remaining debt from the bank loan...

He put the money away with a sigh and closed his fist on a few coins in his pocket. First thing tomorrow, he resolved to get this business of the missing paycheck sorted once and for all.

Time dragged for the rest of the afternoon. He went out to distract himself with lunch and an aimless walk down 18th Street, but each time he thought about Tanya his insides clenched with equal parts anticipation and anxiety. He lost track of how many cigarettes he went through.

By the time six o’clock finally rolled around and he stood waiting in front of the E Street Cinema, he was starting to feel a bit sick to his stomach. He ignored it, chalking it up to dehydration and nerves, and hoped that a light dinner would take care of it.

Leo’s heart lifted briefly when Tanya finally arrived in a bright, talkative mood, and they spent an hour at the all-night café next to the cinema. He did his best to eat something and share in Tanya’s excitement about the new film, but his worsening stomach pain drew his attention inward.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything more to eat, Leo?” 

It took him a few seconds to realize what she said. “Hm? Oh, no, I’m not hungry,” he mumbled.

“Are you sure?” She examined his face with deep concern. “You have been pretty quiet. Are you feeling all right?”

“I don’t feel well,” he admitted. His arms drew inward and crossed over his stomach. “I don’t think I can stay for the movie.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Leo,” she said, her voice full of sympathy. “I hope the food wasn’t bad.”

“No, no. I don’t think so. It’s not that kind of pain.” He winced with another sharp ache, like the point of a knife inside him. He didn’t want to explain how this sort of thing always happened to him in times of stress—which was often.

“I’m sorry to leave you alone,” he went on.

“Who cares? I don’t want you to stay here and suffer just for a movie,” she exclaimed. “Do you need help getting home? Should I go with you?”

“No, please...” 

“You’re sure I can’t?” She stopped herself short in the act of reaching towards him. Her hand hovered in the air before she drew back, biting her lip.

“You’re right,” she said. “Please get home safe, Leo. I hope you feel better.”

He assured her that he would. He suffered in silence on the bus home, ignoring everyone and everything around him, and fell straight into bed once he was safely in his room.

“Why does this happen to me?” he whined. Everything in his belly felt bloated and tight, like nothing could move. He undid his pants to relieve the cutting pressure of the waistband and turned over on his side. The pain slacked, just for a moment, so he stayed curled up where he was. He remained in bed for the next hour, tracing the cramps and unhappy noises of pain through his guts, until gradually things began to loosen up. One hasty trip to the toilet later, and he even started to feel a little better.

He drank a glass of water with bicarbonate and let it settle, enjoying the feeling of relief bubbling through him. As he rested quietly and opened a book to read, his attention began to drift from the pages and back to his disastrous evening. One thing in particular refused to leave his memory; that look Tanya had given him just before he left. She had watched him so intently with a strange look of mingled pity and longing for... what, exactly?

He shut his eyes as the answer hit him much too late.

_Idiot,_ he thought. _She was trying to come home with you. She wanted to help you._

“Why would she want to do that?” he muttered.

He didn’t have a good answer. At the very least he was relieved that she didn’t have to see him at his worst, but he couldn’t get her expression out of his mind. No one had ever looked at him like that before.

He stretched languidly and began to daydream, trying not to think about what Tanya might say if she knew how he imagined her. It was a familiar fantasy, one he had imagined countless times in his life, but now it was so vivid he could almost feel soft hands on his skin, stroking him, playing with the hair on his chest. The faceless, nameless woman he normally imagined was replaced with the image of Tanya. Her limbs wrapped around him from behind, pressing into the curve of his back, embracing him with her whole body. Now he imagined her hands moving over his aching stomach, pressing, rubbing gently in circles to soothe the discomfort inside. He thought of what she might say to help relax him, and how she might climb on top of him and trail kisses down his belly, until all the pain was replaced with a pleasurable, urgent throb between his legs.

He couldn’t help himself. He went through any number of these fantasies, finding friction against his own hand until he felt the surge of uncontrollable release, eyes rolling back, his mouth opening to rapid breathing, and everything in his mind and body found perfect calm and lay quite still.

A mild sense of shame overtook him some minutes later. _It would be a wonder,_ he thought as he cleaned up, _if she ever wants to see me again._


	5. Release

The accounting office, as Leo learned the next day, was barely an office at all. It crouched in an obscure little cranny on the first floor of the east wing, almost hidden behind a regiment of metal filing cabinets stretching in a long row down the hallway. Small wonder that almost no one seemed to know where it was located, but once again it was Dr. Carvell who came through with the answer.

Silently thanking his sole friend in the department, Leo opened the door to enter a cramped, windowless office occupied by only two desks. It was unusually brightly lit, and he found himself blinking against the glare. Every flat surface was covered with some form of potted plant life under its own lamp. Flowers, vines, bonsai trees, even tropical orchids sprouted and cascaded from the shelves like a jungle. The slightly humid air was fresh and sweet-smelling.

He began to wonder if he had accidentally wandered into a greenhouse when he heard someone exclaim “oh!” and clear their throat. Behind one desk, a young brunette woman in a white and green flowered dress was watching him, blending perfectly with the surrounding leaves of ficus and jade.

“Hello,” said Leo, still smiling faintly at the impressive indoor garden. “This is still Accounting, yes?”

The woman nodded. She stood up and hurriedly swept what looked like a hand of playing cards into a drawer. “How can I help you?” she said.

“I work in Paleontology and I haven’t been paid in almost a month. I wanted to know what happened to my paycheck.”

“What’s your name?”

“Leo Becker.”

The woman frowned and went through the files in a cabinet near the door. She searched one drawer, then another without success.

“Would it help if you looked for my full name? Leopold Becker?” he suggested, looking over her shoulder.

“No, that shouldn’t matter. All records are by last name,” she said, chewing the end of a pen. “There’s one file for a ‘Beckert,’ but—”

“What?” Annoyance flared in him at that name. “May I see that?”

She pulled the file and opened it, peering closely at the name and numbers. “No. This is a ‘Fritz Beckert.’ Although, that’s odd. The routing number does say Paleo.”

Leo snorted. “He thinks my name is _Fritz?!_ ”

“Huh?”

“Miss, there’s nobody named Fritz Beckert in my department. But there is a new department head who enjoys calling me by the wrong name.” He snapped his fingers with a new realization. “I’m going to guess that he brought you an updated list of employees when he took over, didn’t he? And my real name wasn’t on it?”

“I don’t know,” the woman shrugged. “I wasn’t responsible for that. This is all very weird, isn’t it? But strange things like this have been happening a lot lately. I don’t understand if it’s the wrong time of year or something, Mercury being where it is and all, or if the spirits are just being playful.”

Leo’s eyes wandered around the room. “Uh, yes, of course. But about my check...”

She continued as if she never heard. “You know, there are many bad spirits around this place. That’s why I keep my plants here, where it’s safe, and they create their own good aura, too. Every time I go in the hall it feels like I’m not welcome, and there are strange noises...”

Leo began to inch towards the door. “Perhaps I should come back later.”

“No, no! Just wait.” She held up a finger for quiet, looked around as if the walls were listening, and continued in a stage whisper. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ll personally find out where your check is. Normally I’m told not to bother with problems like this, but my boss isn’t here today.”

She produced a scrap of paper and thrust a pen into his hand. “Write your name down and I’ll fix it for you. Later I’ll burn this, and perform a spell for you so this mistake won’t happen again. How’s that?”

“Spell?” Leo murmured, raising an eyebrow.

“What?”

“I said ‘swell,’” he continued in the same breath, and wrote his name. He was more doubtful than ever of receiving his money, but resolved to come back later when the accounting office wasn’t operated by voodoo. He thanked the young woman graciously and hastened to leave the strange garden behind him.

“This place, I tell you,” he sighed, holding his head. 

He cut across the public lobby to return to the west wing and started to head back upstairs, but paused on the landing, looking down towards the dim basement level. After a few moments of thought, he descended and searched once again for the Microscopy laboratory. To his relief he found it much more easily this time, and didn’t feel half as nervous as he was before. He smoothed his hair and went inside.

“Tanya?” he called. “Are you here?”

“Yes, coming!” Her voice emanated from a sub-room off to the left. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“No, don’t get up,” said Leo, following her voice. He found her sitting underneath a metal table, a toolbox open next to her feet as she performed some repairs on unfamiliar machinery. She flipped a switch and the loud rattle of a pump sounded from across the room, making him jump.

“Sorry, I know it’s loud.” She switched it off again and peered from under the table, her face lighting up happily when she saw him. “Oh it’s you, Dr. Becker!” she exclaimed.

“Miss Rosenthal,” he answered with a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too. I hope you’re feeling better today?”

“Much better, thank you. I, uh, wanted to apologize again for ruining our evening.”

“You didn’t ruin anything. I was worried about you.” She held his gaze for a few seconds too many before realizing it. “Um, give me a minute, I’m just fixing some earthquake damage. ”

“Of course, go ahead,” said Leo. “I still need to find out if anything broke. I heard that Geology lost some of the minerals in the public exhibit.”

“Oh, what a shame. Not the giant crystals?”

“I hope not.” He sat down and let her work in peace for some minutes. The clean hum of idle machinery took on a regular thumping, a monotonous, comforting heartbeat. After a while he started to feel goosebumps on his arms and he closed the front of his jacket.

“It’s cold in here, Tanya!” he said, glancing at her with sympathy. “Don’t you get cold?”

“I like it,” she replied, taking a deep refreshing breath. “Better than roasting outside.”

“I’ll take that over freezing. You know, I came to Washington in January,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets. “And somehow it wasn’t even that cold in Berlin. Why is that?”

“It can get pretty cold here,” she said, and looked thoughtful. “But if you’re away from home, it always feels colder no matter what.”

Leo paused. He had never thought of it that way before. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “At least it’s quiet down here.”

“It feels so safe, doesn’t it?” she said, and opened an access panel. The diagram of lights reflected in her glasses, glowing fervently.“Not many people come down here except me. It makes me feel like I’ve gone alone into a giant, living machine, and I know every part of it. I don’t even need to see the controls most of the time. I can operate them by touch in the dark, and sometimes it even feels like I become a part of them. Part of something greater. I’m sure that sounds odd, but... you understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” said Leo, perfectly serious. He knew that feeling in other ways. He found it in lonely deserts, in the digging of ancient strata, in tasting the rocks to find the porous cling of shell and bone, or in libraries, seeking those elusive scraps of memory forgotten from his days in the lecture hall.

“You must love what you do,” was all he could think to say.

“I do,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like this laboratory is only place for me.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

She hesitated to answer, her fingers playing nervously with a screwdriver. “The curators don’t like me,” she said.

“What? Why shouldn’t they like you? I like you,” he added with a little smile.

“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” she said. “Actually, they’re mostly indifferent, but others... I don’t think they like speaking to technicians. They’d rather not see me in the offices at all.”

“Listen,” he said firmly. “Don’t pay them any attention. Curators are idiots who only think they walk on water.”

“You’re a curator,” Tanya said, hiding a grin.

“Oh, I include myself,” he laughed darkly. “And as curator, I say that you are welcome to come upstairs any time you like.” He leaned back in his seat with a wry look. “You can listen to me make a mess of my conference talk.”

“Is that the Paleo conference I’ve heard about?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s next week.”

“Why should you make a mess of it?”

Leo stared into middle distance. The worried lines deepened on his forehead. “I don’t know. It was hard enough speaking for an audience back home. And now... well, I’m sure you can tell my English is not very good.”

“Don’t say that. Your English is excellent,” said Tanya. “I understand you perfectly and so will everybody else.”

She stood up from the floor, holding onto the edge of the desk, and reached for Leo’s hand as he offered to steady her. Their fingers laced together as if by themselves.

“You’re very kind,” he said in a quiet voice. He lingered on her gaze, holding hands just a moment longer before letting go.

It was at this exact wrong moment that his empty stomach, continually gnawing at him the whole morning, decided to speak up with the loudest, longest growl he’d ever heard. It seemed to go on forever and even the ambient sounds in the lab didn’t cover it. He froze with a look of shock, hoping in vain that Tanya couldn’t hear it, but she had. She covered her mouth, giggling a bit, and didn’t seem to know where to rest her hands.

“Well,” she said, her face turning pink, “Do you want to get something to eat?”

“Ah... that’s a good idea, I’m starving,” he admitted, trying not to betray all of his embarrassment at once. He checked his watch and found it was closer to lunchtime than he realized. “Shall we eat in the cafeteria today?”

“Oh, that’s fine.” Tanya watched him from the corner of her eye with the same curious intensity he saw the night before. All the way upstairs, and even throughout their lunch together, she seemed on the point of saying something important, but didn’t say much until they were finished eating.

“Leo. Can I ask you something?” she blurted.

“Of course.”

“My landlady makes dinner for the house once a week, and for some reason she’s always pestering me to bring a friend. Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

Leo glowed inside. “I would be honored,” he said. “Only your landlady might not be pleased to see me.”

“Pfft. You’re right about that, actually. But you didn’t do anything wrong, she just hates men.”

“So why invite me?”

Tanya smiled innocently. “Because I’m terrible and I like to annoy her.”

He grinned. “All right, then.”

“Good. I’ll meet you on the front steps of the museum after work, around five o’clock.”

She waved goodbye, and the rest of the day crawled past unbearably slowly. A number of useless department meetings went by. More ridiculous conference minutiae were endlessly discussed. At 4:30 he couldn’t take it anymore and went out on the steps early for a smoke, watching the afternoon clouds roll in, until he felt Tanya’s light touch on his shoulder and they left together.

They managed to avoid the worst of the evening storms, pulling up in Tanya’s neighborhood just as the rainclouds burst. They sprinted from the bus stop, laughing as they were pelted with cool rain, and caught their breath under the wooden porch roof of a modest boarding house.

“Well, here’s my place,” said Tanya. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the shrunken boards above their heads, to a gap where the rain leaked in a steady stream.

“I can’t wait to move out of here,” she muttered, shaking water from her shoes.

They entered the front door and ran into a wiry, pinched-faced older woman in the front hall, carrying a tray into the dining room. She backpedaled and fixed both of them with a suspicious stare.

“Miss Tanya,” she said sharply. “Who is this?”

“Hello, Ms. Duncan,” Tanya answered in a weary tone. “This is my guest for the evening.”

“Guest?” Ms. Duncan looked down her nose critically. “I didn’t say you could invite men into this house.”

“You never said that about dinner guests,” Tanya retorted. “You said ‘a friend,’ and he’s a friend of mine from work. Leo, this is Ms. Duncan.”

“How do you do,” said Leo, taking off his damp hat.

“You were very rude to him on the phone the other day, I might add,” Tanya said.

“That was you?” Ms. Duncan sniffed, looking him up and down. “I suppose he can stay for dinner. But he can’t go in any of the upstairs rooms.”

“I know that,” scoffed Tanya. “Don’t worry, we won’t stick around. As a matter of fact, Leo and I are going out this evening.”

“We are?” Leo inquired, before Tanya bumped his leg.

“Ah, I mean, that’s right, of course we are,” he went on, clearing his throat.

Ms. Duncan’s thin lips pursed together sourly. She gave Tanya a withering look and returned to fussing with the platter in the dining room.

“Where are we going tonight?” Leo whispered.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tanya whispered back. She scowled and silently mouthed the words ‘I HATE HER’ behind Ms. Duncan’s back.

“I could guess,” said Leo slyly, as they went into the kitchen to wash up.

The other young ladies of the house appeared not long after. Each one filed past Leo’s seat at the dining table with a look of curiosity and mild shock, to the point where Tanya had to rebuke them for apparently not knowing what men looked like.

He took the attention uncomfortably and sank lower in his chair, wondering if it was too late to eat somewhere else, but Ms. Duncan was already setting down trivets for the hot serving trays. A tantalizing smell of grilled chicken wafted from the center platter, and he watched with renewed appetite as plates of baked potatoes and greens braised in bacon grease were passed around the table.

Tanya hesitated for a second as she passed the plate of greens to Leo. “It isn’t kosher,” she murmured, looking at him questioningly.

He took it from her with a reassuring smile. “Tanya, if I was worried about that, I would have starved to death a long time ago,” he quietly replied, loading up his plate.

“Same here,” she grinned.

All the food was excellent. The chicken, cooked in sweet apricot jam, was so tender and moist that he hardly needed the knife, and he rather mindlessly ate through about three whole potatoes mixed with sour cream and green onions, his only thoughts on how savory it was. From time to time he stole a glance at Tanya’s progress through the meal, secretly excited when she went for seconds.

Between bites of hot buttered bread, Leo entertained questions about his work from the curious young ladies of the house, a bit baffled by their interest but flattered all the same. They peppered him with questions from all sides, from sea lilies to the exact years of the Devonian period to the process of fossilization itself, and in about fifteen minutes he had confidently explained all the basics of his conference talk without any nervousness at all.

“See, Leo?” Tanya said. “I said you’d do fine. Just imagine us as your audience for the real thing.”

The ladies laughed encouragingly and he flushed with obvious pleasure, even as he found himself tongue-tied for the rest of the meal.

When he couldn’t eat any more, Leo would have liked nothing better than to lie down in a comfortable place and digest, but the icy gaze of Ms. Duncan said otherwise. True to their word, he and Tanya went out again into town, deciding to return to the cinema and finish the film they missed the first time around.

There weren’t many other patrons that night, which suited him fine. He took his seat in the theater and subtly arched his back against the chair, his belly taut and aching slightly in a good way. Tanya seemed to notice his lazy satisfaction and leaned over to him.

“Want some popcorn?” she joked.

He hiccuped and rested his hands on his stomach. “No, I don’t,” he smiled.

“Me either.” Tanya stifled a burp. “I might hate living with Ms. Duncan, but she knows how to cook.”

“Yes, thank you for inviting me, that was very good. I haven’t had a meal like that in a long time. And I liked watching...” Leo blushed and halted his train of thought.

“What were you going to say?” asked Tanya.

“Oh... nothing.”

“Oh, now you have to tell me,” she teased. “Can’t say something like that and not finish it.”

“Well. I was only going to say that I... liked watching you eat,” he said quickly. “It’s very... I mean it’s... I don’t know.”

Tanya watched him with a peculiar half-smile. “Satisfying?” she finished for him.

He nodded bashfully.

“You like watching me eat a lot, don’t you?” she continued. Her fingers lightly circled her plump midsection.

Leo’s whole face was blazing. He forced himself to meet her gaze, certain that she was trying to torment him.

“How did you know?” he asked. 

“Because I saw the way you looked at me when I finished the second plate. No, don’t be embarrassed,” she pleaded, catching sight of his uncomfortable expression.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he mumbled.

“Leo, you don’t understand. I think that way too,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I mean that I like to eat, too. It’s more than just being full. It’s a feeling like...” She struggled for words. Now it was her turn to flush red. “It’s like--”

He watched her closely. “Like nothing else in the world?” he offered.

“Yes!” she answered. Her eyes deepened as her words stumbled over each other, thick and fast. “It’s so _good._ I don’t know why. But I think about it all the time. I think about eating until I can’t hold any more. I think about getting bigger.” She spoke in a quiet trance to herself, as if she had forgotten he was there. “There’s even times when I think I could eat the whole world, and everyone in it, and still not be satisfied.”

Leo shifted in his seat. The familiar warm feeling was stirring low in him, more urgent with each pump of his heart. “I think you could,” he murmured in a daze.

The house lights went down, sending the whole theater into perfect darkness. The newsreel, the short, and nearly twenty minutes of the feature film went by before Leo could even consider doing what he ached to do. He took another sidelong glance at Tanya, watched her fingers circle contentedly over her full stomach, and knew that what she said could not be an accident. She was inviting him. She had to be.

In that moment he dared to reach out, placed one hand on her belly, and started to rub. He could hardly believe it when she didn’t flinch away, but arched into the touch. Her lips curved in an even wider smile, and she took his hand in hers, pressing it deeper into her belly.

Leo moved closer, softly resting his cheek on her shoulder. “Do you like that?” he murmured in her ear.

“Yes. It feels so nice.”

He continued rubbing, watching her face illuminated in the silver screen like moonlight, diamond-bright, the reflected images flickering on the surface of her skin. She grew so relaxed that her mouth fell slack, exposing wet lips and a glisten of her teeth.

“Tell me again what you said before,” he whispered. “About eating the whole world.”

She shook her head languidly. “That’s only a fantasy.”

“What if it wasn’t?” He spoke as someone in a dream. “I think you could devour the whole world. Everything. You’d destroy it and it would be inside you.” His fingers contracted, giving the soft roll of her belly a squeeze. “And then somehow, whenever you want, you’d go back to create the whole world over again--or maybe you wouldn’t.”

“That’s not easy, eating the whole world,” she said, turning her head to face him. “It would mean eating you, too.”

“I wouldn’t even mind,” he said softly. “Not a bit.”

Their faces were almost touching now, neither one of them aware of moving closer together. At first Leo hesitated, but his body decided for him. Taking his chances, he brought his mouth to hers in a burning kiss. He pressed her, hard and desperate, and finally her lips parted to let him in, and her tongue was hot and licking in his mouth. For a long time they didn’t know anything else but the taste of each other, the grip of their embrace.

His breath shuddered when they came up for air. “I love you,” he panted, stroking her face. “Tanya, I--”

She silenced him with another kiss, her hands pulling at his collar, sliding down his back and under his waistband. Her lips grazed his ear.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

He didn’t need to be told twice. They left the theater in a great rush and ran into the street after a passing bus. They took their seats and anxiously counted the minutes back to Leo’s apartment. Flushed and breathless, Tanya held his hand tight and stifled a moan when he let his other hand drift up her leg, reaching higher beneath her skirt.

“What if someone’s looking?” she whispered.

“I don’t care,” said Leo, his breath coming faster as he kissed her neck.

It felt like ages before they made it to his room. Leo barely had time to lock behind him before Tanya was on him, her powerful body pressing him roughly against the door. She clung so hard that he felt certain she was going to crack a rib, but he submitted to her kiss and refused to let her go, wanting to melt into her, to become part of her forever if it meant experiencing this for the rest of time. Still embraced, they moved to the other side of the room in a kind of dance, shedding shoes and articles of clothing as they went.

“I love you, Leo,” she said. Her breathless words tumbled out rapid-fire, as if fearful she might lose her nerve. “I love fat men.”

“You do?” His voice purred low as he thrust against her, pushing her until she fell backwards into his bed. She welcomed him on top, inviting his full weight on her, and her legs wrapped urgently around his back.

“I always have,” she said. “You’re the first man I’ve met who didn’t try to deny it, or thought I was making fun of him.”

“And everything you said about eating and getting bigger--that was true?”

“Yes,” she gasped.

He shut his eyes in bliss. “How is it we love the same things?”

“I don’t know. But it’s all true, Leo. I need you.”

His only reply was a short, lustful noise in his throat. He flung his glasses onto the nightstand, then removed hers with a bit more care. They both pawed at each other, groping to remove the last of their clothes. Without waiting to unhook it he pushed his hands under her brassiere and thrilled to grasp soft handfuls of her breasts. He buried his face in them, licking each of her thick, hard nipples, massaging them to a deep pink until they stood at full attention from her flesh.

He pulled back for a second to see her spread upon the bed, now fully nude, every part of her abundantly soft and thick as butter. He groaned and moved between her legs, intent on plunging straight into her, but the sensation of sliding between her warm pillowy thighs was enough to send him flying over the edge too soon. Uncontrollably he threw his head back, panting, hips pumping as he came hard over her in fresh spurts.

When his head cleared and the room steadied around him, he lifted his weight from her and looked down. Underneath his own earth-shattering sense of relief was the uncomfortable, sticky awareness of shame.

“Got a little excited?” Tanya said, smirking.

“Forgive me,” he sighed. “It’s been so long.”

“It’s okay. We can try again later.” She stayed under him, reaching up to stroke his chest, and spoke easily as if she had seen it all before.

Leo rolled off her, spent and slick with fluids and unwilling to get up right away to clean. It was tempting to fall asleep at her side, cuddled in her arms, but he looked again and saw the faintest shadow of disappointment in her eyes, a lonely drawing-down in the corners of her mouth.

That wouldn’t do. He kissed her neck again as his hand slowly trailed down, pinching at her nipples, rubbing over her round belly and still lower into the crease of her thigh. She squirmed with pleasure as he found her clit and her hips moved against the pressure of his fingers. She was so dripping wet that when he parted her labia and slowly inserted two fingers, they slid into her almost without effort.

“You don’t have to wait,” he said, and curved his fingers forward to stroke her from the inside.

“Oh. Oh, what are you... ahhh.” Her eyes flew open. “What are you doing to me?”

He paused. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she sighed. “no, don’t stop. Keep doing that.”

He did so, and watched fascinated as she pumped her hips in time with his strokes. Her hands began to massage her own stomach while he manipulated her from inside. When he let his thumb rest on her clit, she moved even faster and her face grew flushed. He pushed a little more, a little faster, and when she finally came it was like a tidal wave. Her hips lifted off the bed as she cried out throatily, still thrusting against his hand, and her pussy contracted around his fingers like a vise. Unprepared, he held on with an exclamation of surprise and triumph, riding out the shocks with her, until she relaxed and melted into the bed with a sigh.

“That was beautiful,” he said in awe.

Her only reply was a sated noise and a happy, unfocused look into space.

They waited for a while and allowed their blood to cool before getting up to clean. Their trembling legs felt unsteady under them on the bathroom tile, and they were grateful for the moment they could return to bed.

Tanya turned out the lights before settling next to him, her outline visible only in the faint glow of streetlights through the blinds. “I want to stay with you,” she said. “Please.”

“Of course,” he answered, reaching for her. “I don’t want to let you go.”

Warmth flowed through him as she planted a kiss against his stomach, and her hand massaged around his navel in a soft little circle. He sighed deeply and pulled tighter, encircling her possessively, and buried one hand into her tangled hair. Her scent was part of him now, like dried flowers in fresh-pressed linen, and a smell of something else that he had no name for, deep and hormonal enough that he could taste it.

“One of these days,” Tanya reflected, “we’re going to finish that film.”

He laughed. “Not anytime soon.”

They quieted and fell asleep together in a damp pool of body heat, slowly dripping sweat into the sheets, as the midsummer night cooled.


	6. Fin

Early the next morning Leo blinked awake in the gray dawn light, slowly emerging into consciousness before his usual time. There was a warm, heavy weight on his stomach and he shifted under it pleasurably. When he looked up, he realized it was Tanya lying across him, deep asleep. He switched off the alarm clock before it could ring and spent a few precious moments lying very still, listening to her snore.

“Hey. Hey, Tanya,” he whispered, smoothing her hair. “I got to get up.”

He had to repeat himself a few times before she awoke. She snored louder with a deep intake of breath. “No,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. “Don’t go.”

“I got to go, it’s time for work.”

“I want to stay here.”

He hugged her close. “Me too. But my boss might not like it.”

“Tell him that I wanted to listen to your stomach instead.”

He laughed indulgently. “I don’t think he would understand that,” he said. But he remained still for a little while longer, feeling her arms tighten around his body as she nuzzled against him, her ear pressed into his belly, until she was rewarded with a slight rumbling of hunger inside him.

“Mm. That’s what I like to hear,” she sighed.

“You’re just as strange as I am,” he teased. “But I don’t mind. Maybe tonight, if it makes you happy, you can listen as much as you want.”

“I’d like that,” she said, arching her back in a stretch. “If you let me, I would listen all day long.”

They picked up their clothes from the floor and readied themselves for work in a hurry. On impulse, Leo took her to breakfast at a café in Penn Quarter he hadn’t visited in ages, making it before the morning rush for coffee and bacon and eggs and thick slices of toast with honey butter. He felt uncommonly full and satisfied as they walked the rest of the way to the museum, if poorer. He was down to pocket change now, even as he stubbornly refused to let Tanya pay for anything, and it made her uneasy.

“You sure everything is all right?” she asked, as they waited to cross Constitution Avenue.

Leo paused to light a cigarette and avoid answering for a few moments. “Perfectly all right, I assure you,” he replied airily, not confident at all in what he said. They were approaching the museum entrance when he spotted an unwelcome figure in a gray suit, canvassing people on the sidewalk ahead.

“Oh no,” said Leo.

“What?”

“Look over there.” He gestured up the sidewalk. “That man, the one talking to the group up there. A couple weeks ago he tried to make me buy the Bagarad… something-or-other… he tried to sell me a book.”

“Oh.” Tanya watched the salesman critically as they drew nearer. “Well, there’s always someone looking to make a buck. Just ignore him.”

“What if he recognizes me?” Leo held back, searching for another way around.

“So what if he does?”

“Well. It would be very awkward.”

Tanya was not impressed. “Just keep walking. He’ll find some other sap to buy his book.”

“All right.” A beat went by before he looked askance at her. “I beg your pardon, ‘some other’ sap?”

“I didn’t mean—uh oh, never mind. I think he’s seen us.”

Leo turned away and pulled down his hat, but it was too late.

“Well, look who it is!” The salesman approached with a blinding grin, stack of pamphlets in hand. “Changed your mind about the books, mister?”

“Er, no…”

Leo was still pondering some excuse when Tanya answered for him. Without breaking stride, without even looking at the man, she swept past without a single word. It took Leo an extra second to follow suit, touching the brim of his hat before continuing at Tanya’s side.

“Hey, what’s the hurry, friend?” The persistent salesman stepped in front of them, blocking their progress, and cast an appraising glance at Tanya. “Perhaps your lovely wife would be interested in a set of fine books?”

“No,” said Tanya firmly.

“She’s not my wife,” added Leo, inadvertently exhaling smoke into the man’s face.

“Oh, you could have fooled me!” The salesman coughed, opened a pamphlet and focused his attention on Tanya instead. As he spoke his hand crept closer, resting much too familiarly on her shoulder. “Now Miss, as I was telling this gentleman just the other day…”

Tanya bristled. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped, and pushed the salesman away, sending him stumbling headlong into a random passerby. Then as if nothing had happened, she took Leo’s hand and serenely went on her way, ignoring the flurry of foul language behind her.

Leo gazed at her in admiration, a grin spreading over his face. “That’s what I like about you, Tanya!” he exclaimed. “Someone gets in your way, and you walk right over him. If you wanted, you could crush him, just like that!” He snapped his fingers, laughing.

“I didn’t want to crush him, I just wanted him to leave me alone.” She looked embarrassed. “I probably got carried away.”

“I don’t think so. He just wouldn’t listen to you,” said Leo. He finished his cigarette and flicked it on the pavement with a thoughtful look. “Maybe I’ve been wrong about everything, about how they do in America.”

She looked at him quizzically. “How they do...?”

His dark eyes gleamed with a new idea. “I mean that ever since I came to America I’ve done nothing but run around being frightened, hoping someone else will do the right thing. But that’s not the way, is it? Maybe sometimes you have to do what you did to that fellow back there.”

“Well, sure, Leo. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself. But don’t be like me. I have an awful temper.”

“You? No, not you, _Liebchen._ I don’t believe it.” He drew her into an exuberant hug, arms tight around her waist, and managed to lift her off her feet, just for a second, a few inches off the ground. He was gratified to hear her squeal of surprise, joyful and breathless in his ear, and he tingled when she held him close and enfolded him softly against her breasts.

They parted ways inside the museum, promising to meet again soon. Paleontology was strangely deserted for this time of the morning, and Dr. Carvell wasn’t in his usual place yet. All at once Dr. Peterson stormed in from another floor, barking at his assistant for having bought an inferior brand of coffee.

Leo cleared his throat. “Dr. Peterson,” he said firmly as the chairman approached. “I must talk to you about—”

“Get out of the way!” Dr. Peterson raged, pushing past.

Leo ducked back to avoid his bulk and stared after him indignantly. The situation was truly becoming intolerable, but he calmed himself and decided to try again later, possibly after Dr. Peterson found better coffee.

He settled into his work. The better part of the morning passed before he had an unexpected visit from Tanya.

“I found you!” she exclaimed, peeking around the corner.

“Hello Tanya,” he said brightly, and reached for his watch. “It’s not time for lunch already, is it?

“No, I finished Dr. Peterson’s specimen. Want to see it?”

“Of course!” He motioned for her to come closer.

She unfolded a cardboard slide holder, still pungent with evaporating solvent. It held six glass slides in all, and each contained four perfect ribbons of tiny blue-stained sections, all lined up in serial order like rows of parading soldiers. Leo carefully lifted one slide out of the case with forefinger and thumb.

“Ah, look at that,” he said, holding it up to the light. “Beautiful.”

“Look at it under the scope,” she urged, pointing to a disused compound microscope left by some former occupant in the corner.

Leo flicked the metal clip, clicked the slide into position on the stage, and allowed Tanya to adjust the light and focus.

“There,” she said, moving aside. “What do you think?”

He stared down the lens. He had no idea exactly what organism he was looking at, but every cell stood out in crisp blue and purple detail under the glass. When he scanned down the row, there was no curvature to the ribbon, no wrinkles in any of the sections whatsoever.

He beamed at her proudly. “I think it is flawless, if that counts for anything. How do you line all of them on the slide like that?”

“Oh, the sections are floated in a warm water bath, and I pull them onto the slide in rows. It’s hard for me to explain, but I’ll show you sometime if you want.”

“I would like that. Have you ever done anything with fossils before?”

“Afraid not,” she said.

“Well, I am going to steal you away so you can learn. I say you work for me now.”

She laughed. “I wish I did, Dr. Becker.”

“Likewise, Miss Rosenthal.”

They touched noses affectionately. When he took her hands into his own, he realized that some of her fingertips and her right thumb were newly bandaged in white gauze.

“Oh, what happened?” he exclaimed in sympathy.

She smiled sheepishly. “It’s nothing. I had a little accident with the glass knife.” She shook a bandaged finger at him. “Let this be a lesson to you. Be more careful with raw glass.”

“I’ll remember that.” He brought her hand to his lips and gave her injured fingers a light kiss. “There, better? Good. So what else are you doing this afternoon, hm?”

“Well, right now I’ve got to give these to Dr. Peterson. Is he in today?”

“Yes, he’s here,” Leo replied, more than a little disappointed. “But I’m afraid he’s in a very bad mood today. I mean worse than usual. Perhaps you should see him tomorrow?”

She shook her head firmly. “I’ve delayed on this enough as it is. Who knows, the slides might put him in a better mood. Maybe?”

Leo rolled his eyes. “I doubt it. But you can try.” He pointed down the corridor from the library. “His office is around there, to the right.”

“Thanks. Wish me luck.” She folded up the slides safely into their cardboard slots and headed down the corridor, only to run into Dr. Peterson as he came barreling unexpectedly from the other direction. Leo witnessed the near-collision with a cringe.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” Dr. Peterson snapped.

“I’m sorry!” Tanya exclaimed. “I was just looking for you. Your slides are ready.”

“Oh yes. You’re the one from Microscopy. Took your sweet time getting these to me, didn’t you?”

“Sorry, Dr. Peterson,” she said with a light sprinkling of sarcasm. “Would you like to see how they turned out?”

“Give it here.” Dr. Peterson roughly took the slides from her and opened the cardboard fold. He made a noise of disgust and waved a hand in front of his face.

“These stink of toluene,” he said gruffly. “Can’t you even dry them properly? Look at that, the cover slips aren’t set.”

“Oh, they are.” Tanya’s condescending grin was fixed on her face. “They might smell a little fresh, but they’ve dried out overnight.”

“The hell they are,” muttered Dr. Peterson. He tucked the slide holder under his arm and pointed down the hall. “Now get out. Try not to lose a finger next time.”

“Pardon?” Her fingers curled into her palms, concealing the bandages, but Dr. Peterson had already seen them.

“You heard what I said,” he scoffed. “Careless woman. It’s a wonder all you technicians haven’t killed yourselves.”

Tanya froze. Every bit of happy confidence vanished from her stance, as if she was trying to shrink to nothing. She lowered her head and turned away, passing Leo’s desk without looking at him.

“Tanya?” Leo called out.

She didn’t respond. She drifted blindly down the main hallway, shoulders hunched in pain. When Leo caught up with her, she was trying desperately not to cry.

“Tanya, what’s wrong?”

She covered her face in shame. “He made me remember it all over again,” she said through tears.

“Remember what?”

“A technician did kill herself.” She shuddered, struggling to keep her voice down. “Two years ago. She took pills...”

“Shh, shh. It’s all right.” Leo put his arm around her comfortingly. Acid burned in his chest as he took a backward glance at Dr. Peterson, who was already slinking away.

“How could you say that to her?” Leo accused.

Dr. Peterson only shrugged. “What do you care? She doesn’t work for this department.”

“That doesn’t matter. Apologize for what you said.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” returned Dr. Peterson. “She’s only a tech—”

“That’s enough, Felix!” Leo shouted.

The whole floor went painfully, deathly quiet. Leo did not know how long he stood there, shocked into silence by the tone of his own voice. He could already feel several pairs of eyes watching from the outer offices as Dr. Peterson moved in with a dangerous scowl.

“If you have something to say, Fritz, I suggest you say it now.” Dr. Peterson paced closer, his mirror-polish shoes thumping the floorboards, until he loomed tall over his victim.

Leo gulped, but one more look at Tanya’s teary face made him hold firm.

“First of all,” he said coldly, “My name is not Fritz. Second, I don’t know why you hate me, and I don’t care. You can go on hating me and I won’t say another word. But when you go after her…” He pointed a shaking finger at Tanya. “When you scream at her for doing better work than you could ever do in your whole miserable life—”

“Careful, Beckert,” Dr. Peterson growled.

“No!” Leo’s voice was approaching a kind of shriek that he never realized he was capable of, but he was too infuriated to care. “I am not going to sit here and watch you hurt her! You leave her alone, do you hear me? You leave her alone!”

The chairman’s eyes flashed, and a slow, oily grin crept over his corpulent features. “Well. I never dreamed you had such concern for the technical staff,” he said, before his grin drained away in a second. “It might be touching if it weren’t so insincere.”

“I’m insincere?” Leo shot back. “What do you know about it? You had no concern for anyone in this department since you arrived. You hate this place, you hate everything about it. You—you won’t even approve paychecks on time, as I found out!”

Dr. Peterson snorted, avoiding the shocked stares of curious onlookers. “That’s ridiculous. You think I’d risk breaking federal law?”

“I think you’d risk a lot of things, if you thought you could get away with it.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean? If you’re accusing me of something—”

“It means you haven’t paid me, Peterson! Give me my check, or else I go straight to a higher authority. To the museum Secretary if I have to. I think he should know what kind of people work for him.”

For the first time, Dr. Peterson looked uncomfortable, but he composed his face swiftly. “The Secretary is a good friend of mine. One word from me, and you’ll find yourself in the middle of an investigation.”

Leo stared at him over his glasses. “An investigation for what?” he said. “I have done nothing. And you can’t threaten me, either. I didn’t go to all the trouble to become a citizen just to be bullied by people like you.”

Dr. Peterson sneered. “Get out of my sight,” he ordered, and pointed at Tanya. “That one too, she’s not supposed to be here. I don’t want to see either of you in this department again.”

“Maybe you won’t!” Leo turned his back, ignoring Dr. Peterson’s furious glare, and offered his arm to Tanya.

“Will you be all right?” he said to her quietly.

She nodded and wiped her eyes. Together they walked away, arm-in-arm, before Leo turned to deliver a parting word.

“I expect my check by tomorrow, Peterson. See that it’s made out to the correct name: Leopold. Johannes. BECKER.”

He rolled the last “r” in a defiant growl and escorted Tanya away, down the stairs, all the way back to her lab, where he slammed the door behind them. Without thinking he reached for a cigarette, muttering incoherently as he struck the lighter again and again and got nothing but sparks.

“Leo?” Tanya ventured.

His face twitched. He threw the sputtering lighter back in his pocket and resorted to stealing a match from the box near the alcohol burners, flicking it to life and inhaling the lit cigarette in one smooth motion.

“Leo,” she said again.

He glanced up and caught her staring at him in disbelief, a few glittering tears still standing in her eyes.

“What?” he fumed, shaking out the match.

She gently moved him closer to the fume hood, opened the sash window and flipped a switch. The fan started up and pulled a thin tendril of smoke into the airflow.

“If you have to smoke in the lab, try to keep it in there,” she said.

His eyes flitted between her, the fume hood, and the lit cigarette in his hand. As if hearing her for the first time, his expression shifted and he stubbed the cigarette out in the sink.

“Oh Tanya, I’m sorry.” He tried to wave the smoke cloud towards the open sash, watching it carry up the chimney. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Leo, that was… I’ve never seen you so angry.”

“Of course I was angry,” he huffed. “You think I would just sit there while he said those things to you?”

“You didn’t have to say anything. But I’m glad you did.” She wiped the last of her tears away. “It shouldn’t make me so upset when he says those things.”

“Has he done this before?”

“He’s always finding nasty things to say,” said Tanya. “But this was the first time he brought up... that.”

“Poor Tanya.” Leo shifted restlessly, pacing up and down. “He still didn’t apologize to you. I should have said more.”

“Did he really not pay you all this time?” she asked. “Is that why you’re broke?”

Leo nodded. “He got my name wrong on the checks, on purpose.”

Tanya scoffed. “The shitheel.”

“Ja,” he agreed. “Oh, but I shouldn’t have demanded my check like that. Now he’s going to have me fired.”

“Can’t fire feds,” Tanya pointed out. “You have to do something unbelievable before they’d fire a fed.”

“And what I did wasn’t unbelievable? Now he’ll cancel my check and I’ll have to find a new job and—I may never see you again.” He stopped pacing, stepped towards her with a look of despair and put his arms around her waist.

“I’ve been a fool,” he said.

“No,” she replied. She let one hand rest on the back of his neck, fingers combing through his hair, and she kissed the top of his head. “He can’t do that to you.”

“You think so?”

“Positive,” she said.

They stayed together for a long time, each silently reassuring the other, until the outer door clicked and they heard the footsteps of another technician entering the lab.

“Now. Go on back there,” Tanya murmured, stepping back reluctantly from their embrace. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

His feet dragged as he climbed the stairs, dreading what awaited him. He steeled himself for any number of frightening possibilities, but when he entered Paleontology again, the usual silence reigned supreme. He crept back to his desk, considering how and when he should clear it out for the last time, when he noticed something lying atop his papers. Blinking, he opened the plain white envelope to find nothing other than a paycheck, signed with the angular, hard-pressed pen-strokes of Dr. Peterson himself.

Leo looked around nervously, half-expecting an ambush that never came. Still not quite believing its validity, he held the check up to the light, but instead discovered something more interesting written in small print inside the envelope:

_I took care of this with Accounting. –Lawrence._

Stunned, Leo stashed the check in his pocket and cut across the floor to Dr. Carvell’s office, who sat calmly behind his desk opening mail.

“Before you say anything,” Dr. Carvell said, holding up the point of a letter-opener, “I heard all about it and I’ve taken care of everything.”

“But Lawrence, I don’t—”

“You should have come to me sooner,” Dr. Carvell smoothly interrupted. “I had no idea any of this nonsense was going on. But I spoke to Felix while you were out, and I believe we came to an understanding. He won’t give you any more trouble about the checks.”

“Then I’m... I’m not fired?”

Dr. Carvell tilted his head. “Fired? Certainly not. Why would you think that?”

Leo stood gaping for a second before a look of relief washed over his face and he reached out to shake Dr. Carvell’s hand. “Never mind, sir. Thank you. If there’s anything you need—”

“Not at all, Leo. Oh, and by the way. The young lady in Accounting seemed to know about you already. She told me that since it’s so close to the new month, you should expect a second check in the mail soon. Enjoy your double pay in time for the conference.”

Dr. Carvell smiled through thin lips and waved Leo back into the hallway, where he stood indecisively with one hand pressed to the envelope in his pocket. He looked at it again, just to make sure.

“It really is how they do in America,” he murmured to himself.

The rest of the week flew by after that. Consumed with departmental duties, he wasn’t able to see much of Tanya until the calendar turned over to a new month; the day of the Paleontology conference. The August morning dawned clear and hot, and the alarm clock startled him out of muddled dreams just as usual. Only this time when he went to wash and shave, something different awaited him in front the open bathroom window: his brand new suit, purchased and tailored for him the same day he had gone to cash his checks. He took another moment to admire the beautiful dark blue jacket and matching vest, all cut from wonderfully light summer fabric and weaved with a hint of thin white pinstripe. Feeling more gleeful than he had in weeks, he dressed, put on freshly-shined shoes, and went to work with a light heart.

He quite enjoyed the round of compliments he received from his colleagues that morning, and for a few brief hours he seriously believed he could take on the whole world. Unfortunately his newfound confidence lasted only as long as the afternoon, up to the very moment he found himself at the head of the dim conference hall, waiting for the chairman’s beleaguered assistant to announce him to the audience.

He hung back behind the lectern, resting his sweating hands in his pockets. He scanned the audience blankly, trying not to think about how many pairs of eyes were staring back at him, when a welcome face in the second row made him stop. He mouthed her name and waved to her, almost in disbelief, and Tanya waved back with a sunny smile.

From that moment it was easy. The rest of the audience faded into obscurity as he spoke to her and her alone. His allotted half-hour passed in a whirl of crinoid classifications, taphonomy and even a brief personal story or two from the field, and through it all he was flooded with silent gratitude to have someone like Tanya in his life.

And just like that, it was all over. All his prior angst and dread fell away to the noise of applause filling the lecture hall.

“You did great, Leo. I knew you would!” Tanya congratulated him as he left the stage.

He sat down next to her with a relieved smile. “I hope to never do that again,” he said, wiping his brow. “But thank you.”

Their hands clasped together on the armrest as they waited for the next speaker, and he stole a glance at her new clothes. It was something he had never seen her wear before: a light summer dress with three-quarter sleeves, all in a deep cobalt blue that almost matched the shade of his own suit. Her lips glistened in a vibrant red, and he realized he didn’t remember if she wore lipstick before.

“You look lovely,” he said.

She lowered her eyes, blushing, and ran her hand lightly over his sleeve. “Thanks. You looked very handsome up there.”

He accepted the compliment quietly and squeezed her hand. He leaned closer as the next speaker approached the lectern.

“Come with me to dinner tonight?” he asked. “The whole department will be there.”

She agreed. “Where to?”

“I’ll tell you later. But it’s very nice,” he promised, dropping his voice to a whisper when someone shushed him from the crowd.

The rest of the conference talks were fascinating but they ran late, and by the end of it Leo could hear several rumbling stomachs in the audience, including his own. No one, he suspected, anticipated the Paleontology group dinner more than he did. In a rare show of extravagance, the department had paid in full for an evening at the Fire Fountain, a high-end hotel restaurant on 16th Street, and he was dying to taste the fare that he could only dream about each time he passed the place.

It did not disappoint. Even in looking through the menu he fought the temptation to order one of everything. Everything he tried was exquisite, from the fresh tomato soup, to the soft butter rolls, to the delicate crisp salad topped with slices of pear. He split a charcuterie and cheese board with the table and went through an obscene number of fried oysters, each one piping hot and juicy in the center. But the medium rare tenderloin steak was the crowning achievement, marbled and seared to perfection, and it paired well with the unusually rich, sweet red wine chosen for the table. It was as close to a perfect meal as anyone could hope for, and one that he wasn’t likely to see again.

As the waiter came by with desserts of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream garnished in mint leaves, Tanya adjusted her glasses and frowned at something across the table.

“Leo. Why does Dr. Peterson keep staring at us?” she asked. “He’s been doing that all night.”

Leo burped and glanced across the table to find Peterson glowering at them with so much displeasure he seemed fit to give himself a ulcer at any second.

“He’s looking because... well, we make a funny pair, don’t we?”

Tanya beamed with her endearing crooked smile. “We do.”

“But you don’t care what anyone else thinks about us.”

“Of course not. Anyone else can go hang,” she declared.

“That’s right,” said Leo, shooting a smug look across the table. “Peterson can go hang.”

Together they raised their wine glasses in a facetious toast to Dr. Peterson, smiling with the knowledge that he couldn’t hear a thing they said.

It was late when Leo and Tanya left the restaurant together, each of them full to bursting and a little drunk. They decided to walk back to his apartment, neither in any hurry to leave behind the sounds of street musicians and late-night bars drifting on the warm breeze, but they were heavy with food and aching to lie down together, too. Their hearts beat with a mutual fantasy and they took turns gently patting each other’s full gurgling stomachs when no one was looking, quickening with an arousal only they could understand.

On the apartment steps, Leo sensed that he might expect to see Max tower over them with a scowl as they entered the foyer, and he was right. Tanya stopped in her tracks with a wary look, but for once Leo was untroubled. He touched the brim of his hat with a flourish.

“Good evening, Max,” he said.

“Don’t give me that,” Max grunted.

“Why, what’s the matter?” Leo replied with a calm smile.

“Look, Leo. I think I’ve been pretty patient with you. I didn’t wanna say this at first, since you’re always so good about payment. But I’ve given you every chance to pay up and you won’t do it. Now your rent’s overdue for July. And another thing, I told you before this was a respectable joint. You can’t come in here with strange women every night. You think I rent this place by the hour or something? And furthermore—”

Tanya’s back stiffened indignantly. She was about to retort when Leo patted her hand and discreetly made a sign for quiet. Throughout the whole tirade he said nothing, only deliberately withdrew his wallet and patiently waited. When Max paused to draw breath, Leo opened the wallet, peeled off two crisp twenties, and slid them across the scratched surface of the front desk, all with no change to his expression but for a single raised eyebrow.

Max stopped. He gathered the cash in his fist with a suspicious squint.

“Two months’ rent?” he said incredulously.

Leo inclined his head politely.

Max mirrored the gesture in sarcasm. “You two enjoy your evening,” he grumbled, stuffing the bills in a front pocket.

Tanya covered her mouth. “Strange women?” she giggled when they were out of earshot. 

“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you,” said Leo, as he tried and failed to keep a straight face. “All the rich society ladies love me, and every night I bring them here to my luxury apartment. That’s how I make the big money.”

His last words were swallowed up in a helpless belly-laugh as he fumbled to unlock the door.

“Aha, I knew it all along!” joked Tanya. “All that stuff about a missing paycheck was bunk.”

She laughed so much that she had to steady herself on Leo’s shoulder. They grinned at each other, still giggling quietly as they moved together for a kiss.

“No, there’s only one strange woman for me,” Leo said. He reached up to hold her face, burying his fingers in her waves of hair.

“I know. And I’m very strange,” she said.

“I would not have it any other way.”

They shut the door behind them and retreated into soothing darkness, bathed only in the ambient glow from the street lights outside the window. Slowly they undressed and curled together in bed, sighing at the warm contact of naked skin and soft, full bellies. He accepted the press of her body when she eased on top of him, covering him completely like a heavy blanket.

“We could always tell your landlord we’re married,” she suggested impishly.

“Haha. He knows better. But he doesn’t care.”

She thought it over for a bit. “What if we really were married?” she said, nibbling on his ear.

He paused. “Tanya, I do love you,” he said. “But I should warn you, I am very boring. If you marry me I’m only going to get older, and fatter, and much less interesting than you think. You know that, don’t you?”

“You’re wrong, Leo,” she said. Her hands moved down his chest and came to rest on the softest part of his belly. “I already find you very interesting.”

He smiled blissfully. His hands traced the curve of her lower back and rested on her plump, solid buttocks. He smacked them playfully once or twice, and all at once he felt himself grow so hard that he had to shift his hips to relieve Tanya’s weight on him, sending his cock springing between her legs. In his eagerness he pushed into the wrong spot, too sensitive, and she grunted in discomfort. He stopped and allowed her to guide him, this time gliding inside her just as easily as if they had been together all their lives.

“Ahh,” murmured Leo as he stroked her thighs. He touched her swollen clit, astonished at how soaking wet she was, and slid his thumb against it slowly, up and down. “You know, pretty soon we’re going to need our own place. Especially if you’re going to have my children. Yes?”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?” she teased.

He laughed. “No.”

He grabbed her hips and thrust deeper into her, and her breath caught. Even in the dark her warm smile could be felt throughout the whole room, almost visible to him in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincere thanks to everyone who read this story. It was a joy to write for these two again, even if I took my sweet-ass time in finally finishing the last chapter. ;) I hope to share even more of their lives together!


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